Exploring the Effects of AI-assisted Emotional Support Processes in Online Mental Health Community

TL;DR

This paper investigates an AI-assisted workflow in online mental health communities that enhances emotional support by helping users articulate feelings and respond empathetically, based on a preliminary user study.

Contribution

It introduces a novel AI-infused system to facilitate emotional support in OMHCs, improving clarity and empathy in user interactions.

Findings

System helped seekers clarify emotions and describe texts concretely.

Providers learned to respond more empathetically.

Preliminary user study indicated positive impact on communication.

Abstract

Social support in online mental health communities (OMHCs) is an effective and accessible way of managing mental wellbeing. In this process, sharing emotional supports is considered crucial to the thriving social supports in OMHCs, yet often difficult for both seekers and providers. To support empathetic interactions, we design an AI-infused workflow that allows users to write emotional supporting messages to other users' posts based on the elicitation of the seeker's emotion and contextual keywords from writing. Based on a preliminary user study (N = 10), we identified that the system helped seekers to clarify emotion and describe text concretely while writing a post. Providers could also learn how to react empathetically to the post. Based on these results, we suggest design implications for our proposed system.